For its third edition, Africa is/in the Future is proposing a polymorphous vision of African future.
If we look at the continent as a vast space without borders, whether geographical or mental, we can invent a future that is un-inhibited, where artists from the diaspora and artists from the continent meets in a shared imaginary.
In Nova, we will make room for some new futuristic short films that we have found from far away ! For this occasion we invite cultural producers and activists from Paris and London who will offer unpublished audiovisual conferences in Brussels. Do not miss our flavorsome table d’hôte with savories from Senegal !

Bénie Buta Mode, a young Brussels designer, questioning the history of wax, in a film created especially for this weekend !
While she’s discussing with other creators in the brussels fashion African scene, she seeks to know if wax has contributed to the emancipation of women in Africa, and how it will evolve in the future.

"We Need Prayers" its a series of short films, produced by the Kenyan collective The Nest, of which we have screened two films already (including one by Jim Chuchu) during the first edition of Africa is / in the future in 2016. In this film, singer and actress Patricia Kihoro interprets an artist imagining an advantageous outlet in the Afro-Futuristic Wave...

The director Jahmil X.T. Qubeka, together with the producer Layla Swart and the impressive actress/musician Mandisa Nduna, create a surprising and uncanny co-production between China and South Africa. The film answers the question "Where Has Time Gone ?" posed by the BRICS film festival (hence the co-production).
In a dystopian future, the agent Nobomi SX1 accesses an ultra-select virtual video games and tries to escape from his sad life. The salvation will come through a return to primal values and earthly sensations, as conditions of rebirth...

Adebukola Bodunrin, filmmaker and American artist from Nigerian origin, collaborates with Ezra Claytan Daniels, American cartoonist for this animated film, where Yetunde, a Nigerian astronaut works inside the Nigerian space station Eko ! Which is also somewhere on the borders of the galaxy...
Reaching the point of no return, she attends the birth moment of the universe, rediscovering an ancient Yoruba myth. Astral and ancestral – Listen ! the Afro-futuristic dialectic is ON !

A young Zulu woman transforms into Ghost Kat, a powerful and mysterious creature, and roams an unfriendly fictional city through six episodes. Played by Manthe Ribane, the singer, dancer and dazzling performer of the Okzharp and Manthe duo (from the Hyperdub label !), this latest film works on the connection between her personal performance, the hybrid music of Okzharp (Gervase Gordon), between Qbom and Londonian scent, with urban images by Chris Saunders, edited with stimulating video effects.

An illustrated talk by cultural Producer Chardine Taylor-Stone who’s looking at how Black women imagined their futures in film, photography, music and literature.
Chardine Taylor-Stone is an English LGBT punk activist, she lives in London, active as "Inclusion and Education officer" for Black Pride. She defines herself as a cultural producer, extremely active on social networks, where she does not forget the social issues of different struggles, far from a complacent mercantile feminism.
In addition she’s a collaborator at the British Film Institute, as being in charge of the "Africa Odissey" mission. We invite her to present in English with the support of video clips of "Black Women in Afrofuturism", for simply questioning how black women are imagine today a future through cinema, photography, music and literature.

+Le royaume du Wan-And-I

Bénie Buta Mode, 2018, BE, video, vofr
,
10'

Bénie Buta Mode, a young Brussels designer, questioning the history of wax, in a film created especially for this weekend !
While she’s discussing with other creators in the brussels fashion African scene, she seeks to know if wax has contributed to the emancipation of women in Africa, and how it will evolve in the future.

+We Need Prayers : This One Went to Market

Jim Chuchu, 2017, KE, video, voang
,
6'

"We Need Prayers" its a series of short films, produced by the Kenyan collective The Nest, of which we have screened two films already (including one by Jim Chuchu) during the first edition of Africa is / in the future in 2016. In this film, singer and actress Patricia Kihoro interprets an artist imagining an advantageous outlet in the Afro-Futuristic Wave...

+Stll Borne

Jahmil X.T.Qubeka, 2017, ZA-CN, HD, voangstfr, 24'

The director Jahmil X.T. Qubeka, together with the producer Layla Swart and the impressive actress/musician Mandisa Nduna, create a surprising and uncanny co-production between China and South Africa. The film answers the question "Where Has Time Gone ?" posed by the BRICS film festival (hence the co-production).
In a dystopian future, the agent Nobomi SX1 accesses an ultra-select virtual video games and tries to escape from his sad life. The salvation will come through a return to primal values and earthly sensations, as conditions of rebirth...

+The Golden Chain

Abebukola Bodunrin & Ezra Calytan Daniels, 2016, US, HD, vostfr, 13'

Adebukola Bodunrin, filmmaker and American artist from Nigerian origin, collaborates with Ezra Claytan Daniels, American cartoonist for this animated film, where Yetunde, a Nigerian astronaut works inside the Nigerian space station Eko ! Which is also somewhere on the borders of the galaxy...
Reaching the point of no return, she attends the birth moment of the universe, rediscovering an ancient Yoruba myth. Astral and ancestral – Listen ! the Afro-futuristic dialectic is ON !

+Ghost Diamond

Chris Saunders, 2018, ZA, HD, vostfr, 23'

A young Zulu woman transforms into Ghost Kat, a powerful and mysterious creature, and roams an unfriendly fictional city through six episodes. Played by Manthe Ribane, the singer, dancer and dazzling performer of the Okzharp and Manthe duo (from the Hyperdub label !), this latest film works on the connection between her personal performance, the hybrid music of Okzharp (Gervase Gordon), between Qbom and Londonian scent, with urban images by Chris Saunders, edited with stimulating video effects.

Christelle Oyiri, DJ, French producer and sound designer, explores the intersection between technology, ethno-musicology and representation issues of the black diaspora. She proposes here a multidisciplinary project combining DJing, 3D video, inviting the audience to see, hear and feel the hybrid nature and a unique style of the crossroads between the Belgian hard-tech and the Ivorian cut-shifted style.
This is how she highlights the story of immediate contemporary history, which is deliberately forgotten : the one of Logobi dance, dance style that was born in the early 2000s in the popular neighborhoods of Abidjan in Ivory Coast (country where her father was born). She exposes to the process of how Logobi became able to seduce and federate eventually the French Afro-descendant youth from the popular districts, until the moment it produced its own digital ecosystem and its personal language and even its own literature, through "info-cybers". Surprised by the lack of description of this phenomenon in the French media press, she leads the investigation herself and realizes the difficulty of the participate actors / actresses in this movement, who wish to claim it, to access legitimacy.

An ultra-charismatic slammer and rapper, Blak Odhiambo lives in Kibera, the gigantic slum south of Nairobi, where much of the Kenyan capital’s artistic energy emerges. He is part of Masai Mbili, art center co-founded by Otieno Gomba, author of the festival poster from last year. Together with artists such as Kevo Stero, Greenman Muleh Mbillo, Kavochy, etc, they describe their daily life. Blak draws his inspiration from the imaginary of Kenyan rmusic, Reggae, American Hip hop, though also via unexpected encounters during his urban wanderings ! He will reveal in Nova his new project : Panthera Leo. Greedy and hungry for ultra-diverse musical encounters (such as rappers Erko from Germany, Alex Rotka from France, Moroko from Kibera and several Kenyan DJ’s), we take advantage of his exceptional visit in Belgium, where we invite him for two weeks to come and bring his warm flow in different contexts !

Dj Raph presents his brand new album "Sacred Groves", on the German label Noland, mixing field recordings from all over Africa, taken from the UNESCO sound archives, and original electronic music, composed and produced in Nairobi, but also in Iwalewahaus Bayreuth during an artistic residency.
He builds bridges between ancestral music, current and future, by returning to the very profound essence of contemporary dance music.
The mesmerizing result is an organic music borrowed from reverence, with the desire to move away from the dry clichés of World Music but returning to the sources...
For this tour, he is accompanied by Nita, Viennese VJ with whom he shared the residence "Mash Up The Archive" at the Iwalewahaus from where she drew some elements that she practiced during these video animations, into a live performance !